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Spotlight on sanitation for World Toilet Day

An open common toilet by the river Padma in Faridpur, Bangladesh. The UN estimates that 1.1 billion people around the world defecate in the open.

Reuters: Andrew Biraj

Aid agencies and international groups are using this year's World Toilet Day to highlight the risks to women and children from poor sanitation.

Since 2001, November 19 has marked World Toilet Day, drawing attention to issues of toileting and sanitation worldwide.

The United Nations says more than 2.7 million people die each year due to lack of sanitation, with almost 2,000 children dying each day from unsanitary conditions.

World Toilet Day

More than 2.7 million people die each year due to lacking sanitation

Most of those who die are under five years old.

Each year, children miss a total of 272 million school days due to water-borne or sanitation-related diseases.

Approximate 1.25 billion women and girls lack safe sanitation

Only 1 in 3 people worldwide have access to suitable toilet facilities.

More than 1 billion people still defecate in the open.Source: United Nations

In her latest report to the UN General Assembly, Catarina de Albuquerque, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation, has called for the elimination of inequalities in access to water and sanitation.

She's told Radio Australia's Connect Asia program the problem extends beyond the the right to sanitation, to other rights including health, education, work and the right to lead a life in dignity.

"It is a crisis that we are facing, and since sanitation is a taboo issue, it's something dirty that we want to hide, we don't want to talk about it, we don't want to talk about it," she said.

"So if we don't talk about and if we make a taboo around it, obviously it's very difficult for governments to prioritise it in their policy and address this problem."

It is a crisis that we are facing, and since sanitation is a taboo issue, it's something dirty that we want to hide, we don't want to talk about it, we don't want to talk about it.

Catarina de Albuquerque, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation

The United Nations says a lack of access to toilets remains an important source of global inequality, with poor sanitation almost exclusively a burden of the poor.

It says lacking sanitation not only made poor people sick; it also shrank their already limited possibilities by forcing them to stay away from school and work

Each year, children miss a total of 272 million school days due to water-borne or sanitation-related diseases.

"Each time I go on a mission for the UN, I always visit a school, and I always talk with the girls, and not having sanitation - not having girls' only toilets - means after they reach puberty, they don't go to school - especially if they have their period" she said.

"And I met some girls who tell me they miss school for one week a month...so you see the dimensions of the tragedy."

Jane Caro from international NGO WaterAid has told Radio Australia's Pacific Beat program the aim of World Toilet Day is to bring the issue of sanitation out into the open.

"As long as we keep it hidden - partly because it's such a taboo, shameful kind of subject still, shamefully - there isn't the same kind of pressure to provide this kind of infrastructure as there is perhaps for other things," she said.

"I think it is that silence that has allowed this to go on, and avoid thinking about it, and avoid, therefore, actually raising awareness, increasing pressure...and generally just being more open about the issue, which is I think the first step towards doing something about it."

WaterAid says 1 in 3 women and girls do not have access to toilets, and unsafe or open toilets increase the risks of physical and sexual violence.

Ms Caro says they've found World Toilet Day events such as 'Big Squat' flash mobs help to raise awareness of the dangers through humour.

When I started...to think about what it would be like to be a woman in a village where there was no toilet - or only one - and where it was not only embarrassing to reveal my needs, but possibly dangerous? It made me think.

Jane Caro, Water Aid

"There's an obvious way to get people to talk about it, and that is our tendency to have 'toilet humour' as part of the way we joke with one another," she said.

"I actually think using some humour...[makes] people think, because that's what it did for me when I started to know about this, was actually to think about what it would be like to be a woman in a village where there was no toilet - or only one - and where it was not only embarrassing to reveal my needs, but possibly dangerous.

"It made me think."

One organisation working on the ground in Papua New Guinea is A-T Projects, which uses local materials to develop toilets for schools and communities in in Goroka Province.

Director Miriam Layton says while some foreign aid helps in setting up proper sanitation, more needs to be done by the local and PNG governments to improve facilities.

She says she hopes the new female governor of Eastern Highlands province will help drive the push to improve sanitation needs for women.

"In our urban centres, as well as rural centres, there is no proper facilities to cater for women's needs as well," she said.

"So when women come for business in town, or for markets as well, they face problems when looking for toilets, and that is when they are arrested and there's violence.

"At the moment we are still getting support from outside, not our own government - so we need to do a lot more work to convince the Papua New Guinea government, as well as the donors, to do more in this area."